She has said herself that she will pull no punches with the powerful and influential, whether in prosecution or advocating for the consumer. When National Grid and Keyspan announced merger plans last month, Coakley immediately sought an investigation into its impact on consumers. “She went after the biggest utility in the state,” says one lobbyist, “and whacked them between the eyes.”

Restructuring
As attorney general, Coakley has also impressed many by dumping many of Reilly’s top aides, and bringing in top-notch recruits such as David Friedman, from former senate president Robert Travaglini’s office; Kevin Conroy, from Gloria Larsen’s Foley Hoag circles; and Jeffrey Clements, who now runs the public-protection and advocacy bureau. To head the Civil Rights Division, she hired Maura Healey, who challenged the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy, and helped investigate alleged violations in Suffolk County’s jails.

“A lot of people were worried that, because of her loyalty to Reilly, she would keep his people,” says a Coakley critic, who gives her credit for the staff she’s compiled. It remains to be seen, he adds, whether she listens to them. “The test will be whether her staff stays there.”

Coakley is also making some forward-looking changes in the office. She created a new health-care division that will, among other things, try to anticipate the effects of the new reform legislation — trying to head off insurance fraud, for example.

Plus, she launched a massive information-technology overhaul of the notoriously stone-age office systems — badly neglected by the technophobic Reilly. (The office has already switched from Lotus Notes to Outlook, the e-mail program made by Microsoft Corp., which Reilly crusaded against for alleged antitrust practices.) That’s going to make it easier for Coakley’s investigators to do their jobs, and for residents to lodge complaints and get consumer-protection information, she says.

Some of her other pledges — to crack down on drug dealers and on employers who exploit immigrant workers, for example — seem to be slower coming, according to close observers, who suggest that Coakley’s goals have had to take a back seat, understandably, to newly-arising issues.

Besides, it’s early in her term — although Coakley knows that she was expected to hit the ground running. “I had an easier job transitioning” than new governor Deval Patrick, she says, ever aware that the intense interest in the new governor has given her some breathing room from the press and the public.

That’s given her the ability to draw attention to her office on her own terms, when she wants it — a gift that has helped her negotiate these early decisions.

Deval Patrick for governor After 16 years of Republican rule, it is time to return a Democrat and a leader with a sense of humanity to the governor’s office. It is in that spirit — and for other reasons as well — that we urge voters next week to vote for Deval Patrick.

Power hungry? It’s remarkable how dramatically the state’s political leadership has changed since the most recent Constitutional Convention.

Giant shadow One striking aspect of the Kennedy tributes was the focus on the help he and his office provided for ordinary individuals in Massachusetts — all those things that fall under the category of "constituent services."

Chaos Theory In less than two weeks, when Massachusetts voters elect Martha Coakley to the US Senate — let's not pretend that Republican state senator Scott Brown has any chance of pulling off the monumental upset — they will trigger a massive domino effect that has the state's political class buzzing with anticipation.

Deval and the lawmen For the past few weeks, Kerry Healey has pounded the Bay State with the message that Deval Patrick is dangerously weak on crime. Soft on crime? Arrest rates for violent crimes have plummeted under the Romney-Healey administration. By David S. Bernstein

Tea-bagger Brown triumphs Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley may be a good person and a dedicated public servant, but thanks to her gut-wrenching loss to tea-bagging Republican Scott Brown in the race for the US Senate seat held by the late Ted Kennedy, Coakley is now — quite rightly — a figure of local scorn and national derision.

Plogging away When asked about the Internet, most political candidates will dutifully tell you that it’s the wave of the future, or the wave of the present, or the greatest thing since chocolate-chip bagels, or … zzzzzz … wake me when baseball’s post-season starts.

Menino’s hit list At a recent political event, Boston mayor Thomas M. Menino asked Robert Crane, the former long-time state treasurer, how many years he had held that office.

Ground game Forget Deval Patrick’s 5000-person rally on Boston Common last weekend. A humbler event that took place a few days earlier — an October 11 community meeting in Quincy — offers keener insight into the Patrick-campaign ethos.

Christy’s choice The conventional wisdom is already fixed: if Christy Mihos — the convenience-store magnate and Big-Dig whistle blower who has pledged to run for governor — campaigns as an independent, he’ll be doing the Massachusetts Democratic Party a huge favor.

Can Obama lasso the Bay State? Nobody around here forgets that Deval Patrick swiped the gubernatorial nomination from the establishment-backed Tom Reilly.

MRS. WARREN GOES TO WASHINGTON | March 21, 2013 Elizabeth Warren was the only senator on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, aside from the chair and ranking minority, to show up at last Thursday's hearing on indexing the minimum wage to inflation.

MARCH MADNESS | March 12, 2013 It's no surprise that the coming weekend's Saint Patrick's Day celebrations have become politically charged, given the extraordinary convergence of electoral events visiting South Boston.

LABOR'S LOVE LOST | March 08, 2013 Steve Lynch is winning back much of the union support that left him in 2009.

AFTER MARKEY, GET SET, GO | February 20, 2013 It's a matter of political decorum: when an officeholder is running for higher office, you wait until the election has been won before publicly coveting the resulting vacancy.